Last week former President Carter wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the United States’ failed war on drugs, and the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s new initiative.[1] Carter cited statistics that showed that global drug use from 1998 to 2008 actually increased, something I don’t think many people would find surprising. What caught my eye, though, was that the increase in consumption of the harder drugs cocaine (27%) and opiates (34.5%) were respectively more than threefold and fourfold the increase in marijuana (8.5%) consumption. This stat reminded me of one of the often cited explanations for the illegality of marijuana: that it is a gateway drug, meaning that once used, it will lead the user to initiate the use of other, harder, drugs. Now this statistic on its own doesn’t necessarily indicate that the increase in hard drug consumption is a result of people moving on from marijuana, but from what I’ve seen, read, and observed in real life, I think that the gateway drug claim has merit, and I do believe that people who try marijuana and enjoy it are more likely to try harder drugs. Thus, even to those who argue (correctly) that marijuana is less harmful than certain legal drugs (think alcohol), the fact still remains that marijuana’s real danger lies in tempting people to try harder, indisputably dangerous drugs. Thus, it’s logical to discourage marijuana use in order to prevent people from trying truly dangerous drugs, right? Wrong.
The logic above is tempting, but it takes for granted the fact that marijuana is inherently a gateway drug, when in fact it doesn’t need to be. I’m sure many people upon first trying marijuana remember in health class in middle school being warned about the dangers of marijuana. I’m sure they regularly see anti-marijuana PSAs on TV and in print. And I’m sure they know that in every state marijuana possession is illegal, and in most states it is considered a criminal act. So in many people’s minds, marijuana is a hard drug, and for some, this fact may prevent them from ever trying it. For many, however, that do decide to try it, they may realize a few things: that they like it, that they feel fine afterwards, and that it isn’t as bad as they’ve been warned. For those who feel this and haven’t had proper drug education, what is to stop them from trying something harder? In many people’s minds, cocaine is simply a step up from marijuana, something to move onto once one is ready for the next step. If one’s drug education consists entirely of the anti-drug crusade’s information that more or less equates all illegal drugs, how are they to know that cocaine or heroin is in fact orders of magnitude harder than a drug like marijuana? They can’t, and using the logic conveniently provided to them by the anti-drug sources combined with their own experiences with marijuana, they’re naturally going to believe that hard drugs simply aren’t that bad.
The problem with the gateway drug theory isn’t a fault with the theory, so much as a fault with the initiatives that it has led to. Currently, anti-drug activists attempt to keep people away from harder drugs by keeping them away from marijuana, when instead, they should work to break down the link between marijuana and harder drugs. Instead of grouping marijuana with cocaine and opiates, to stop people from trying marijuana, marijuana should be distinguished from harder drugs, to keep people from feeling that if they can handle marijuana it’s safe to move on up the ladder. Clearly the former approach hasn’t worked, as we’ve seen increases in consumption across all drugs, so maybe it’s time now to try something new. This isn’t an issue of whether marijuana should be legal or not, nor is that what I’m calling for, but rather, I’d simply like to see an acknowledgement that not all illicit drugs were created equal, because a good portion of people are going to try them either way, and when they do, they should have the information they need to make good decisions.
BV
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